Steven's Sweater

 I finally finished Steven's sweater, only a year later than originally planned. I like how the pattern looks, but it is so poorly written. The pattern is bottom up, and the first thing you knit is the body. This part of the pattern is deceptively fine. Despite being the biggest part of the sweater, it went quickly.

Unblocked - I will probably be lazy and not block it until it get washed.

Then came the sleeves. I did them exactly as the instructions indicated. My stitch counts were as the pattern stated, the gauge was as the pattern indicated and also matched the rest of the sweater. But, when had about a quarter of the sleeve done it was obviously excessively huge. Not the cuff, just the sleeve. I ended up having to cut out a third of the stitches to make look at fit like the picture. The biggest issue with this is that it throws off the stitch counts for the rest of the sweater. In addition to this issue the pattern doesn't actually include directions for doing the increases on the sleeves. It just say increase and return to pattern as soon as possible. I made up my own way, but it was a pain.

Then the raglan decreases started. This part I really expected to be better. I considered this to be the key part of the sweater as the decreases align perfectly with the edge of the diamond pattern. The first time I finished this sweater the neckline was huge. Considering that I had quite a few stitches less than the pattern was written for this makes no sense. As written the neckline came out looking like a deep boatneck, which would be fine it this was written for me. But it is nothing what the picture looks like. I added another half repeat of the pattern and basically ignored the pattern. It seems to have worked, but it was a lot more work than I had intended to do.

In the end, it fits Steven and he likes it. I am very happy to never have to use this pattern again.